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Bob Dylan shapes auction history. | BY WENDY LUBOVICH
B
ob Dylan was just 24 years old when he pulled out sheets of stationery from the Roger Smith Hotel in Washington, D.C., and started writing. Scribbling in pencil, he made doodles of a hat and a bird in the margins while jotting down lyrics for “Like A Rolling Stone,” a song that would change the musical conversation from folk to rock. The tune is about a woman who is shunned from her family’s upper-class social scene: It was confrontational, electric and revolutionary at six minutes long. And while the song signaled a passage for Dylan’s career, the recent sale of this landmark document has marked a watershed of its own, selling at Sotheby’s New York for more than $2 million to an unidentified collector. The handwritten lyrics previously were owned by a California man who says he purchased the document directly from Dylan. “‘Like A Rolling Stone’ had enough age to make it valuable and desirable,” says Richard Austin, head of books and manuscripts at Sotheby’s New York. “The Holy Grail of rock lyrics has taken its rightful place as the most expensive popular-music manuscript sold at auction.” The June 2014 sale, entitled “Rock & Roll History: Presley to Punk,” was the first music-history auction for Sotheby’s in a decade, and presale viewings attracted people in their 20s up to their 80s. “Dylan and the Beatles are always popular,” Austin admits, “and there is still a strong interest in Elvis Presley, who has transcended the status of a music icon to become an American icon.” Taking in more than $4 million, the sale sparked fierce interest for future auctions. What’s hot now? Not just a guitar brought backstage for a musician to sign, “but a guitar the musician actually played in concert,” Austin says. “And if there is a photo of him with the guitar, all the better.”
62 62 ArtfulArtful LivingLiving | Autumn | Autumn 2014 l 2014
PHOTOGRAPHY PROVIDED BY SOTHEBY'S AUCTION HOUSE
Like a Rolling Stone